Living in the desert is a strange thing when you don’t exactly love high heat and global warming is making every year hotter than the last. Each year is also the coolest year we will ever see again. Bright side?
As Spring wanes the times I’m willing to run any later than 8am dwindle to almost nothing. What people who aren’t familiar with the desert don’t understand is that its not just the air temperature its how that heat bakes into the very earth itself and then radiates out making the temps feel easily 10-15 degrees hotter then what shows on the thermometer as the day progresses.
Even on pre dawn runs you can touch the canyon walls after a previous days scorching temps and the red rock canyons will warm your hands like holding a freshly brewed cup of coffee.
Elite runners fill up social media with them running in head to toe puffy jackets and pants and talk about how they’re doing intervals on a 10% uphill grade and then hop into the sauna for another 15 minutes post run all in search of death or heat tolerance, whatever comes first. That tip of the spear stuff is fine for them but too much to ask for when it comes to us back of the packers. Im getting on my bike trainer wearing every jacket I own and cranking up the heat to suffer through 30 minutes of heat stroke.
Tourists come to the desert and try their damndest to kill their dogs and give themselves kidney failure by running in 95 degrees with no water and no knowledge of the local trails so when I come across them on a social trail and they already have 14th degree burns and they ask me how to get back to their car while I’m giving their dogs water at least they can say they’re getting in their heat training.
Im going to run early or late and then spend every weekend of the hot months down in the mountains. Just by living here I will end up fairly heat adapted by October right in time for our one week of Fall and then Winter comes and I don’t regret not trying harder to achieve peak heat adaptation. Besides, true desert rats know that the prime desert season is actually winter.
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